CyberForte
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2011
- Messages
- 63
Just for fun, I've decided to record a game I'm playing today. The main purpose of doing so is hopefully some entertaining discussion, but also since I'm using RifE (1.31, latest public svn revision), it might give others an interesting look at some of the changes in this excellent modmod.
Also, as a starting note, my play style tends to favor roleplaying over metagaming. I know there are things I could do that would work better/more efficiently, but if they conflict with my sense of rping the game, I'll skip them. Nothing bores me faster than a game I can't get into the feeling of. Given that, I can't promise I'll finish this one, but I'll do my best even so. Also, the format of this is inspired by the impressively done diaries by Horatius, so a thanks to him for the impetus and for the formatting.
Game settings:
Monarch
WorldofErebus mapscript - I prefer the basic Erebus map for its tendency to give strong defensive positions, but I've been trying to play on more open maps to improve my skills. Sea level is high, and cohesion is medium, so we can expect several continents.
Broader Alignments on
Living World on (Normally would play with this off, but there're certain events I'd like to see)
Blessings of Amathon on
Timid Animals on
New Random Seed on reload on (I'm generally cutting back on reloading, but I refuse to, for example, lose a hero at +95% odds, and occasionally there is a glitch with lair exploration where it says a powerful enemy has emerged but nothing shows and it crashes the next turn, etc. But won't be reloading to save units who lost at low odds or anything)
WildMana on (some mana nodes transformed to random types, mainly there because it adds more nodes in general)
All Unique Features on
Quick gamespeed because I'm fairly impatient, heh
Leader: Falamar of Lanun
I can provide save states if interest is expressed, but will default to not
Starting out, I didn't initially decide that I would be posting this, so I lack screens from before 30. But nothing really interesting happened except losing a scout whilst taking out a spider lair. Here's my capital:
List of recent events:
It seems we've got Illians in the game, under Raitlor, which could be interesting.
Techwise, so far I've hit Ancient Chants, Mysticism, and Exploration. Going for Fellowship if I can get it first, because I personally refuse to use OO as a religion, and thematically, Lanun under Falamar don't seem likely to go for it.
Just a note; I'll try to post future posts in a more RP-esque style. The first one is primarily OoC because I'm getting a feel for this kind or writeup still. Also, lots of things to explain.
On that note, you may notice that beside my name, instead of just good, I have (Chaotic Good -570 275). That's what broader alignments does. In addition to adding law/chaos axis, it makes your position on the good/evil axis a number between -750 (evil) and 750 (good), with -250 to 250 being neutral. This is the same for the law/chaos axis. In addition to adding flavor, this means that religions can now slowly push you toward an alignment based on how long you following, which makes it harder to use exploits like switching around to get paladins/eidolons/druids all at the same time. Other factors such as civics can effect this score--building buildings and units is supposed to be able to, but I've never seen it happen...
Anyway, as we can see, Falamar is pretty deeply entrenched in Chaos, but only barely good. If we do end up following FoL, we'll probably end up Chaotic Neutral, as the current version of RifE shifts you toward true neutral when following FoL.
Another number to note is the little thing in the righthand corner that looks like it's a second Armageddon Counter. This is the xUPT option available in RifE in the SVN release, and allows you to place a limit on the number of military units per team per tile. I forgot to set it when I started, but since then, I've set this to the default suggested value of 8. No stacks of doom in this game, which should make things interesting.
Back to the game:
With the excess of food provided by the sea, once we finish a pagan temple, assigning a priest allows us to prevent even further growth, though we were able to reach the happy cap of 8 quite easily (4 for difficulty, 1 for palace, 1 from Charismatic, 1 from the Tomb of Sucellus in our workable plot radius, 1 from a random event). You may notice that our unhealth is rather high---18 for a 9 pop city? Yes, indeed; another element of RifE is that every population point now causes 2 unhealth rather than 1. However, many boosts have been tweaked to take this into account. Falamar's expansive trait now gives +6 health instead of 3, and once we hook up the Tomb, it will give 2 instead of just 1. Normal resources are still 1 however, since the idea behind this change was still ultimately to limit growth.
And another thing to note here--our first hostile centaur. They'll be appearing a lot if we can't find the lair that's spawning them and explore it. These are pretty weak, and will just bounce off our fortified warrior--though, I should make a second one soon for good measure. The scorpion goblins are more annoying, since they won't suicide on our city defenses very often.
With the coastal commerce, even without financial, hunting comes quickly, and it's looking like we might be able to get FoL in time to found it, with our prophet coming soon after. So starting to research this; also, finally get a few workers out, with growth no longer an issue, and a hunting lodge. We'll need hunters to clean up the barbs.
So, with our workers, we can build farms, cottages, and mines despite not having the requisite techs, but they will take significantly longer. For now, going to put up some mines, because cottages would take quite a while as things stand, and farms would be kind of useless with no luxury resources immediately accessible to boost our happiness up. Also note the worker promotions; these can be accrued with passively gained exp, similar to arcane units. I'm going to avoid the Hardy promotions--those increase withdraw chance, but also tend to prevent the workers from stopping working when an enemy unit approaches--and focus on the Skilled line, which increases work rate.
Turn 52 rolls around, so Orthus is up. Some traveling scholar has also passed through; it seems that he finds out culture to be fine, but hints from the man have suggested that there are at least two more cultured peoples exist. Not bad even so, considering we're not exactly Creative.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
And it seems we won the race to FoL, which is especially nice given that it'll upgrade the kept on our coast to kept forests.... Changing to Religion, we're now known as the Holy See of Innsmouth, and have two more happy to fill. That means we need to hook up the Tomb for those extra health...
It seems someone else has been teching along the same lines as us; we hear that the Octopus Overlords has been founded somewhere, around the same time as Orthus dies. Hearing about people who would worship such revolting creatures, our brave men of the sea give a shudder, glad for the sacred wood of the Fellowship which will consecrate our ships against the power of the undersea monsters... or so we hope.
After making a few hunters, we can start on our second settler. Expansive's price cut on them is really nice this early on. Our second city is settled on the land to the left of Innsmouth as we prepare a few hunters to explore off to the right. Hopefully we can take out the centaur lair before anyone gets horseback riding and it upgrades...
At the same time, a wise woman arises amongst the people of Innesmouth, who, after much meditation in the forests, composes a great and rousing ballad. Though the seafaring Lanun men are familiar with music, the graceful and moving Song of Autumn is nothing like they've ever heard before....
And I'm going to end my first post there, just so I don't lose it. More will be forthcoming soon, and I'll probably be a bit more general after this. There's just only so much to say in the early game, so it seems to make sense to say a lot about what there is.
-CF
Also, as a starting note, my play style tends to favor roleplaying over metagaming. I know there are things I could do that would work better/more efficiently, but if they conflict with my sense of rping the game, I'll skip them. Nothing bores me faster than a game I can't get into the feeling of. Given that, I can't promise I'll finish this one, but I'll do my best even so. Also, the format of this is inspired by the impressively done diaries by Horatius, so a thanks to him for the impetus and for the formatting.
Game settings:
Monarch
WorldofErebus mapscript - I prefer the basic Erebus map for its tendency to give strong defensive positions, but I've been trying to play on more open maps to improve my skills. Sea level is high, and cohesion is medium, so we can expect several continents.
Broader Alignments on
Living World on (Normally would play with this off, but there're certain events I'd like to see)
Blessings of Amathon on
Timid Animals on
New Random Seed on reload on (I'm generally cutting back on reloading, but I refuse to, for example, lose a hero at +95% odds, and occasionally there is a glitch with lair exploration where it says a powerful enemy has emerged but nothing shows and it crashes the next turn, etc. But won't be reloading to save units who lost at low odds or anything)
WildMana on (some mana nodes transformed to random types, mainly there because it adds more nodes in general)
All Unique Features on
Quick gamespeed because I'm fairly impatient, heh
Leader: Falamar of Lanun
I can provide save states if interest is expressed, but will default to not
Starting out, I didn't initially decide that I would be posting this, so I lack screens from before 30. But nothing really interesting happened except losing a scout whilst taking out a spider lair. Here's my capital:
List of recent events:
It seems we've got Illians in the game, under Raitlor, which could be interesting.
Techwise, so far I've hit Ancient Chants, Mysticism, and Exploration. Going for Fellowship if I can get it first, because I personally refuse to use OO as a religion, and thematically, Lanun under Falamar don't seem likely to go for it.
Just a note; I'll try to post future posts in a more RP-esque style. The first one is primarily OoC because I'm getting a feel for this kind or writeup still. Also, lots of things to explain.
On that note, you may notice that beside my name, instead of just good, I have (Chaotic Good -570 275). That's what broader alignments does. In addition to adding law/chaos axis, it makes your position on the good/evil axis a number between -750 (evil) and 750 (good), with -250 to 250 being neutral. This is the same for the law/chaos axis. In addition to adding flavor, this means that religions can now slowly push you toward an alignment based on how long you following, which makes it harder to use exploits like switching around to get paladins/eidolons/druids all at the same time. Other factors such as civics can effect this score--building buildings and units is supposed to be able to, but I've never seen it happen...
Anyway, as we can see, Falamar is pretty deeply entrenched in Chaos, but only barely good. If we do end up following FoL, we'll probably end up Chaotic Neutral, as the current version of RifE shifts you toward true neutral when following FoL.
Another number to note is the little thing in the righthand corner that looks like it's a second Armageddon Counter. This is the xUPT option available in RifE in the SVN release, and allows you to place a limit on the number of military units per team per tile. I forgot to set it when I started, but since then, I've set this to the default suggested value of 8. No stacks of doom in this game, which should make things interesting.
Back to the game:
Spoiler :
With the excess of food provided by the sea, once we finish a pagan temple, assigning a priest allows us to prevent even further growth, though we were able to reach the happy cap of 8 quite easily (4 for difficulty, 1 for palace, 1 from Charismatic, 1 from the Tomb of Sucellus in our workable plot radius, 1 from a random event). You may notice that our unhealth is rather high---18 for a 9 pop city? Yes, indeed; another element of RifE is that every population point now causes 2 unhealth rather than 1. However, many boosts have been tweaked to take this into account. Falamar's expansive trait now gives +6 health instead of 3, and once we hook up the Tomb, it will give 2 instead of just 1. Normal resources are still 1 however, since the idea behind this change was still ultimately to limit growth.
Spoiler :
And another thing to note here--our first hostile centaur. They'll be appearing a lot if we can't find the lair that's spawning them and explore it. These are pretty weak, and will just bounce off our fortified warrior--though, I should make a second one soon for good measure. The scorpion goblins are more annoying, since they won't suicide on our city defenses very often.
With the coastal commerce, even without financial, hunting comes quickly, and it's looking like we might be able to get FoL in time to found it, with our prophet coming soon after. So starting to research this; also, finally get a few workers out, with growth no longer an issue, and a hunting lodge. We'll need hunters to clean up the barbs.
Spoiler :
So, with our workers, we can build farms, cottages, and mines despite not having the requisite techs, but they will take significantly longer. For now, going to put up some mines, because cottages would take quite a while as things stand, and farms would be kind of useless with no luxury resources immediately accessible to boost our happiness up. Also note the worker promotions; these can be accrued with passively gained exp, similar to arcane units. I'm going to avoid the Hardy promotions--those increase withdraw chance, but also tend to prevent the workers from stopping working when an enemy unit approaches--and focus on the Skilled line, which increases work rate.
Turn 52 rolls around, so Orthus is up. Some traveling scholar has also passed through; it seems that he finds out culture to be fine, but hints from the man have suggested that there are at least two more cultured peoples exist. Not bad even so, considering we're not exactly Creative.
Spoiler :
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
And it seems we won the race to FoL, which is especially nice given that it'll upgrade the kept on our coast to kept forests.... Changing to Religion, we're now known as the Holy See of Innsmouth, and have two more happy to fill. That means we need to hook up the Tomb for those extra health...
Spoiler :
It seems someone else has been teching along the same lines as us; we hear that the Octopus Overlords has been founded somewhere, around the same time as Orthus dies. Hearing about people who would worship such revolting creatures, our brave men of the sea give a shudder, glad for the sacred wood of the Fellowship which will consecrate our ships against the power of the undersea monsters... or so we hope.
Spoiler :
After making a few hunters, we can start on our second settler. Expansive's price cut on them is really nice this early on. Our second city is settled on the land to the left of Innsmouth as we prepare a few hunters to explore off to the right. Hopefully we can take out the centaur lair before anyone gets horseback riding and it upgrades...
Spoiler :
At the same time, a wise woman arises amongst the people of Innesmouth, who, after much meditation in the forests, composes a great and rousing ballad. Though the seafaring Lanun men are familiar with music, the graceful and moving Song of Autumn is nothing like they've ever heard before....
And I'm going to end my first post there, just so I don't lose it. More will be forthcoming soon, and I'll probably be a bit more general after this. There's just only so much to say in the early game, so it seems to make sense to say a lot about what there is.
-CF
